crypsis and mimicry
by possibilist
Summary: 'Sometimes she makes your chest big, sometimes she makes you infuriated, but mostly you just love her.' Fabrastings bros. Faberry romance. College things.


summary: 'Sometimes she makes your chest big, sometimes she makes you infuriated, but mostly you just love her.' fabrastings bros. faberry romance. college things.

an (1): this is for a dear friend who also happens to be an idiot because I HAVE SO MUCH HOMEWORK and i wrote you this instead even though you hung up on me today. i hope you're all well x

an (2): references from katherine larson's poetry collection, _radial symmetry_. listen to julia stone's bloodbuzz ohio.]

...

crypsis and mimicry

.

_i used to believe that science was only concerned with certainty. later i recognized its mystery. there isn't language for it—the way i can see you when you are shining. our roots crypsis, our wings mimicry._

...

'I'm going to tell you a secret,' Quinn says, sloshing around whatever lame-ass, lightweight drink she has in her hand. You're at a party—you're each other's respective dates, although you're not _dating_. 'Spencer.' She nudges you with her elbow.

'Okay,' you say, and you're not nearly as drunk as she is because Quinn is hammered by the time she's had two tonics, or three glasses of wine, something you've learned in the year or so you've known each other.

'Can we sit down though?'

'Yeah, sure.' You lead her under the twinkling, blurred lights around the room of someone's house to a relatively unoccupied couch, one hand lightly gripping her forearm. Quinn sits down and forgets to cross her legs; her pretty dress from Anthropologie or J. Crew or somewhere equally as _Quinn _just lays open, and you lightly push her knees together. She offers a small smile, because she's still coherent enough to know she's forgotten, and she's still coherent enough to have a few manners.

'You know you don't have to tell me secrets if you don't want to,' you say, because Quinn is worrying her bottom lip between white teeth and staring at the ceiling fan overhead.

'It's all locked up inside caves in my chest and I don't want it to sleep in there forever,' she says.

You roll your eyes, but you lace your fingers with hers.

'The summer before senior year of high school I took a bottle of Advil because I was lonely and because I was sad but mostly because I wanted to see what would happen.' Quinn scratches her nose, wipes a little mascara along her cheek when she rubs her left eye.

This isn't the first time she's admitted a secret-secret, and it's usually to you and it's usually when she's drunk. Quinn's ridiculously smart and talented, and you met in class when you wanted to smack her with your book for continuous rambles about Lacan.

But there's a part of her that you're in love with, or maybe you're in love with all of her in some important way—it's not romantic, although Quinn is certainly beautiful and you're attracted to _people._

But Quinn is just Quinn, and she says, 'I passed out for like a day and then puked but nothing really happened.'

You nod. 'I'm so glad you're here.'

She smiles with one corner of her mouth, pretty cheekbones soft in the party lights. 'It's all right,' she says, then laughs, then pulls you up by your wrists and starts to dance, singing all the words as loudly as possible even though it's an autotuned song, and you shake your head and ruffle her hair, and you dance along.

.

'_Spencer _Hastings,' Quinn whines, and when you walk into her dorm room you just step over her sprawled form on the floor.

'Yoga today, I take it?'

'_Help me_,' she says, and you kick your shoes off and settle on her bed. She's wearing leggings and a NYADA v-neck and a zip hoodie from American Apparel, and her eyes are shut, blond hair spread every which way.

'So, tell me again what DeLillo thinks of consumerism in _White Noise_.'

'No.'

Quinn starts to pout when you begin laughing.

'I broke my back, you know. It's not funny.'

'I think you're just doing yoga so that you can look at flexible girls' asses.'

Quinn makes a little strangled noise and sits up, craning her neck to see you on the bed. 'That is a plus.'

'You're so gay,' you tell her, then pat the space on the bed next to you. 'Come on, let's study.'

Quinn lays back down. 'I don't need to study.' You wait for a few seconds before she adds, 'Plus I don't think I can move.'

.

One night you get drunk and Quinn is off somewhere probably reading ridiculous philosophy, or making out with Rachel, or some other thing you definitely don't want to hear about for _five hours _the next day, but you text her anyway.

_I'm drunnnnnk, _you say.

You're alone in your dorm room, because school is sometimes shit because your brain is a plethora of thoughts that don't necessarily lead to _careers_, and you've had four gins.

_Let me sing you a lullaby, _Quinn texts back a few minutes later.

_Ha no, _you manage to type, but you smile. _The room is spinning._

_Hey Spence, technically the room is always spinning._

You laugh because she'll never know you did. _Shut the fuck up, Lucy Q._

Quinn texts you, _Love you too._

There's a few minutes—seconds; you're so drunk you're not entirely sure—before you start plodding away at the keys, and you say, _You're so lovely and how could your parents not be so proud of you and I love you and I'm so glad you're here and in my life and you're one of my best friends and your voice is so sweet._

You end up falling asleep before Quinn texts you back, but in the morning you read, _You're beautiful and smart and I would be very sad without you.  
_Later on that day Quinn comes by with ice cream and _The Thin Red Line, _which you don't protest to because you're so hungover you don't really care at this point, and you sleep for most of it cuddled into Quinn, but she nudges you awake for, _If I never meet you in this life, let me feel the lack._

'Terrence Malick is a poet,' she whispers into your collarbone.

'Weirdo,' you say, and smile into the top of her head.

.

Quinn sings. _All the time_. You'd never admit it, _ever_, but you adore her voice, and the way that when she's not paying attention sometimes it cracks. She sings folky things mostly, and she plays the guitar, too. She sings you all kinds of songs—some are love songs ('I need to practice because Rachel's visiting this weekend') and sometimes she attempts to rap to make you laugh, which you can tell is her only motive because a blush spreads along her cheeks but when you giggle she keeps going.

Sometimes, though, the songs are just for you, and you know that, because platonic love is weirder and often more intense than any other kind. And you care about Quinn, deeply and passionately, although she's probably eight thousand times better at saying so (mostly because she talks _a lot_, but still).

'Don't sing another song,' you tell her, because you have tons of homework and if she starts singing now you won't hang up for another hour.

'Please. _Please_, let me sing it for you.'

'I'm hanging up if you start singing.'

Quinn grunts and then you hear her guitar in the background, and she starts to sing Julia Stone's cover of 'Bloodbuzz Ohio,' which is for you and you only and you know this, so you laugh once and then hang up the phone.

She calls you two seconds later and you don't answer; you let it go to voicemail instead. Ten minutes later you listen to the message—Quinn sings most of the song and then stops abruptly and says, 'Oh, there was I beep. I guess it's over.'

It's one of your favourite things in the world. You won't ever tell her, but you'll save the voicemail for years.

.

You know Quinn will probably end up marrying Rachel, if only because if there was a more annoying person than Quinn, they would _have _to end up together.

You like Rachel a lot, though, especially the way she looks at Quinn, and the way she holds Quinn's hand, and all of the little touches when they're together: They're never flashy or gross, in fact, you've only seen them kiss probably ten times. But they're sweet and kind and Quinn smiles a lot when Rachel's around, and Quinn eats better, and once when Quinn has to have surgery on her back Rachel is so patient and gentle to _extra _whiny Quinn, you're sure some people are meant to spend their lives loving each other like they do.

Quinn sometimes makes ridiculously extravagant love letters for Rachel. You tease her about them, because they're corny and _Quinn, _but you've read her poems and she's stupidly talented, so you're sure they're beautiful; she makes you cards too. They—and Quinn's presence itself, really—convince you of a little less loneliness in the world, a red thread wrapping thinly around your wrist, tied together in a simple, tight knot.

.

'I want to go everywhere,' you say, putting down your book and glancing across the table at Quinn.

Quinn smiles from behind her laptop screen, takes a sip of her coffee. 'Send me postcards. I'll buy a world map.'

'It doesn't seem ridiculous?'

'_I travel half the world and I still feel chased.' _She shrugs, then laughs once, brightly. 'Plus, nothing ever really seems ridiculous to me.'

.

All of her professors love Quinn. Sometimes you feel the desire to tell them that she does her readings in blanket forts that she builds on her couch, and that once she wrote a twelve page paper for a philosophy and film class on the two minutes Evan Rachel Wood was naked in _Mildred Pierce_ because it was due the next day and she was drunk the night before, and mostly that she hardly _ever _studies, but you read a few of her theory papers every now and then and they're so obscenely boring and innovative that you decide her professors probably wouldn't care at all.

.

'You know some people say that nothing you do in life matters,' you say. It's late, and cold, and you and Quinn are sitting on the roof in your coats and scarves, trying to wait for a meteor shower.

'That's wrong,' she says, bending down to grab her hot chocolate.

'That's exactly what I think.'

She smiles. 'Either everything's sublime or nothing is.'

You grab her hand and squeeze. 'Poets,' you scoff with a grin.

.

She has manic days.

'My brain is too fast and I'm thinking in mono-syllabic phrases of non-sequiturs—'

'—Quinn,' you say. 'Breathe.'

'Tell me facts about animals.'

These always seem to help. 'About 20% of giraffes die from the fall of being born.'

Her breathing seems to begin to steady. You hear her crying quietly over the phone.

You list a few more, and then she sniffles.

'Thanks, Spencer.'

'You feeling better?'

'Yeah,' she says.

'I love you, crazy.'

'I love you, too.'

.

Sometimes she makes you worried. Because Quinn is seeing a therapist every week—which is absolutely a good and necessary thing—you check in on her more often than you do most people. She's been drunk, or sober and brave and open, frequently enough with you that you know she's been diagnosed with borderline bipolar disorder, that she's taking a mood stabilizer, that she has some solid issues with food and exercise, as well as her upbringing and family.

Usually you don't ask questions—you just make sure she texts you back, and you make sure to remind her to breathe, that no one will care if she doesn't read one Baudelaire essay, that she should eat, that running for two hours until she throws up isn't healthy.

Mostly you remind her how beautiful and special and alive she is.

You've been through it—not in exactly the same way that Quinn struggles with things, but you're not a newcomer to this.

Quinn gets better, though, and one day over a pizza that you'd attempted to cook together, when she's wearing an oversized sweater and criss-cross apple-sauce on the couch, she says, 'There are two scalpels in my pencil can that I've used to self-harm since I was fifteen. Can you, um, throw them away for me tonight?'

You say, 'Absolutely,' very calmly, and she nods, and you both go back to eating your pizza and watching reruns of _The Office_.

Before you leave you take the shiny metal scalpels from between Quinn's plethora of pens and toss them in a dumpster. When you get back to your dorm your chest feels so full and you're so proud of her. Sometimes she makes your chest big, sometimes she makes you infuriated, but mostly you just love her. You cry a little, and the next day you bring her a red velvet cupcake.

'Stupendous.' She immediately sits down and licks the frosting. 'I just wanted to use that word,' she adds.

'Moron,' you tell her, and kiss the top of her head.


End file.
